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Published: July 10th 2008
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I spent the last 3 days in the Blue Mountains National Park, but not before swimming in the sea for the first time in Australia! It was pretty cold but it was nothing for an English person who has swum in the Lake District!
By the next morning (very early) I had warmed up and was ready to go up to the mountains and freeze again (I had no idea it could get so cold in this country!). I went with a tour group because they also do a hop on hop off bus service and I wanted to see what they're like. It was great, we had a little camper van style bus and the guide was absolutely hilarious, and really helpful with planning my trip too once I told him I'm going to Western Australia and I like Vegemite! He took a detour on the way and drove us round the Sydney Olympic Park because there was a Chinese girl on the bus so he started talking about the Olympics and got all patriotic! We did 2 walks- one to see Wentworth Falls and the other one was down into this rainforest covered valley which was awesome, and we
got the world's steepest railway back up! The Blue Mountains has the highest population of the Sydney Funnelweb which is the most dangerous spider in the world and I'm scared of tiny harmless English spiders, but I loved it there anyway! They're called the blue mountains because the eucalyptus oil from the trees makes it all look blue from a distance. And you can always see part of it in the distance because it's about the size of Wales!
I wanted to stay a bit longer so I got off the bus in Katoomba and stayed at the hostel there. Along with 80 Belgian Catholics who were there for the misleadingly named World Youth Day. Firstly it's CATHOLIC World Youth Day which is totally different to what the name suggests...and secondly it seems to be about 6 days...anyway it starts on Tuesday so I'm getting out of here asap after Susie and I get back from her dads place on that unfortunate day. Apparently there's going to be 200,000 "pilgrims" here to see the pope and the buses are going to be all messed up. And there's already groups of annoying people around town wearing flags and only clothes with
the names of their countries on! But anyway the Belgians said they were going to have a "Belgian-Australian Party" which turned out to mean singing hymns and clapping with a few prayers here and there, finished off with the only 2 lines of "Waltzing Matilda" that they knew sung to the wrong tune, repeatedly, about 3 hours after they started. When I got bored of sitting around with the few other non-pilgrims that were staying there being told to be quiet sil-vous plait every time we opened our mouths, I went to bed at about 10. PAR-TAY!!
The next day I went to the Jenolan Caves which is a huge network of caves on the edge of the national park. The Catholics sabotaged my plans again by repeatedly having mass in the biggest cave a few coachfuls at a time. It didn't really matter, because evidently the caves are all pretty spectacular and my photos really don't do them justice.
Yesterday I walked into the Grand Canyon...yep, there's one here too and it's just as good, it just hasn't been exploited as much as the other one! I got a bus timetable from the hostel and it was wrong, so
when I went to the bus stop and it said the first bus was not for 2 hours, I phoned the bus company to check and the guy I spoke to sent a bus that was on its way to the next town to pick me up. The driver asked me what I was doing and I told him I was going to the Grand Canyon and he took me right to the start of the walk, it was like a giant cheap blue taxi!
I joined the same tour that took me there but 2 days late to get the bus back to Sydney where it was raining and the buses weren't nearly as taxi-like as in Katoomba.
Today I went to the beach again with Susie and her friend from Melbourne who was staying here as well, and then I went to book bus tickets and stuff. I changed my plans because it makes more sense at this time of year to come down the east coast from up north, because the weather is best there in winter (now) and down in Melbourne it's better in summer (Nov-Feb), so I'm going to fly to Cairns next week and
travel down the coast. So I went to this backpacker travel place and spent about 2 hours booking things- I got all my bus tickets sorted with a greyhound pass and a hop on hop off tour from Cairns to Brisbane, plus a few other things like sailing in the Whitsundays and snorkelling in the Great Barrier Reef etc. I got such a good deal because I booked so much stuff- the guy chucked in a 3 day canoe tour and a load of hostel vouchers for free and gave me a discount and once you half the price to convert it to pounds it looks even better!
Anyway I'll just put up my photos before I go to bed and you all have lunch while I'm nearly in tomorrow...
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